Cream for the Rich

CEO Paycheck: $42,000 a day

A new analysis finds chief executives of large companies made 262 times the average worker's annual pay in 2005.

But for us common folks well tighten yer belts, regardless of the boom or bust, thats what the bosses always say.

Conference Board survey reveals that the average raise for salaried employees will be 3.5 percent.

Which may explain this; Eating too much fat? That's rich
Wealth and grease in diet go together, Statscan discovers in national survey

We can hope that they pass on sooner than later, unfortunately neither Canada nor the US (any longer) has an inheritance tax, so their ill gotten gains can go on to their obese children.

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Draft Dodgers in Dukhbour Country

This reunion of Viet Nam Draft Dodgers who came to Canada seems to have Faux News all up in arms, as well as some Blogging Tories.

Too bad, so sad. It was an illegal war, in fact it was an undeclared war.

One that until the last American left in a truly cowardly rushed, tail between their legs exit was called a 'polic action'.

Contrary to the comments on Faux News that they are coewards that some how forced others to take their place in the draft, well gee no they left in protest , the guys that cowardly avoided the draft were guys like Clinton and Bush.

Appropriately the reunion is in hippie country around Nelson B.C. where the original anti-war draft dodgers came from Russia during WWI, the Doukhbours And our tradition of harbouring draft dodgers from Imperialist regimes engaged in legal or illegal wars is one to be proud of thank you very much. On the other hand our internment of WWI draft dodgers in Canada is not.

U.S. deserter asks Canadians for support for fleeing war in Iraq

The reunion has drawn dozens of draft dodgers from Canada and the U.S. Many of the men and women remained in Canada but thousands of others returned to the U.S. and travelled back from as far as Tennessee for the event.

The reunion is being held in this West Kootenay city, where hundreds settled about 600 kilometres east of Vancouver.

Almost 50,000 Americans of draft age avoided the call in the late 1960s and early '70s by going to Canada, where for the most part they were welcomed.

Many returned after President Jimmy Carter granted an amnesty in 1977. It's believed that about half the original number chose to remain in Canada.

George McGovern, former U.S. senator and defeated presidential candidate, is the keynote speaker and will speak Saturday about the comparisons between Vietnam and the current war in Iraq.

Arun Ghandi, the grandson of Mahatma Ghandi, will speak on non-violence and the path of war resistance.

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In Our Backyard

Canada to host anti-money laundering secretariat

Good now they can keep eye on some the worst offenders; The Royal Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia/Scotia Bank, BMO, RBC and TD.


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Census Failure In Alberta

So I was wondering why I have been bombarded on the radio with Census ads telling folks to fill in their census forms. Its July and the Census was supposed end in May. And then they extended it.

And continue to for all the fine folks living in Alberta. Cause we're special. 1 in 5 Alberta Households Ignoring Census It's an Albertans libertarian distrust of the State.

Like the governments promise that its confidential or the reminder that its illegal not to participate. That rubs Albertans the wrong way, being told something is illegal and voluntary, the contradiction puts a burr under our saddles.

So like the government is going to fine you...yeah all 250,000 of us. Not likely. Nope...
Statistics Canada is considering hiring a small army of out-of-province enumerators to chase down the 250,000 Albertans who haven't filled out census forms.


See my previous Census stories.

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Frogs Croak

"It's shocking and dismaying," said Wake. "This incredibly rapid increase in the extinction of amphibians around the world is unprecedented in my lifetime." EXTINCTION CRISIS FOR AMPHIBIANS


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Keep Coulter I'll Take Paglia

The nasty work that is the flash-in-the-pan-neo-con-of-the-moment; Ann Coulter, is saved from being too much of a worry since she too shall pass. The neo-cons are selective in the rites and rituals, the traditions they embrace. Like flag, military, church, etc.No intellectual Coulter. In Coulters case she is the latest in the gaggle of replaceable right wing mouth pieces for the Republican party. Her influence is temporary, the gal with the mouth that roared, to be replaced soon by yet another outrageous mouth that roared.

The real intellectual that embraces tradition, in its true Whig form, are the
libertarian dialecticians that follow in the Rothbardian tradition. Of these I place the real intellectual bitch who challenges the left; Camille Paglia is in that tradition.The feminist lesbian that fellow feminists & lesbians love to hate. Can't get better than that.

Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae
Camille Paglia's impressive study of the development of Western Culture manages to piss off a lot of intellectuals. Feminist scholars detest Paglia's essentialist argument that women are biologically bound to "nature" by their reproductive powers. Leftists detest her support of capitalism (a la Ayn Rand), which she sees as having freed women from bondage to men. Queer theorists disdain her aligning homosexual aestheticism with some of the most tyrannical eras and arguing that gay men's idolatry of things masculine goes "against nature." Traditional conservatives hrrmmph at her trashing of the most sacred Western institutions--including Church and State--as male attempts to repress and extinguish powerful female forces.

She is never a neo-con anything despite her detractors on the left, but a classical liberal. So you won't find her in the pages of the National Review, rather she is regular contributor to Salon. She has been interviewed by Reason as well as in Playboy. Placing her in the centre of the neo-liberal univesre of Harold Bloom,as compared the othe post-structuralists and deconstructions in the Modern Languages and Cultural Studies departments.The Camille Paglia checklist


There I got to use neo-con and neo-liberal in the same paragraph exposing them as contrary terms.

Here is a taste from one of her Salon columns.

Now on to educational reform, a preoccupation of this column to which so many readers have eloquently responded. I recently finished reading "Worshipping Athena: Panathenaia and Parthenon" (University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), edited by Jenifer Neils, a book blessedly free of the poststructuralist doubletalk and hackneyed political correctness that are rampant in the humanities

This collection of essays shows what scholarly speculation can and should be -- weighing what is known against what is possible or probable. Theory is always tempered by fact, as best as the latter can be determined with evidence so ambiguous and fragmentary. This fine, patient, precise methodology is not only rarely taught these days but has been abandoned wholesale by the most prominent or rather showiest humanities professors of my generation in the elite schools -- for which they have yet to be held accountable by cultural commentators (an increasingly mundane and maleducated lot) in the major Northeastern newspapers and magazines.

My favorite essay was "Athena's Shrines and Festivals" by Noel Robertson, a professor of classics at Brock University in Ontario who has an engaging, pugnacious style of argumentation. There are countless intriguing details, such as that the six voluptuous caryatids (columns in human form) of the Erechtheum's Ionic south porch are carrying either baskets or water jars on their heads, which gracefully support the architrave. Apropos the Doric temple of Athena Parthenos ("the Virgin"), Robertson describes a nearby altar built over natural fissures in the Acropolis rock: "Liquid from the sacrifice was meant to run into the cracks -- perhaps the blood when the victim was slaughtered, perhaps the bile from the gall bladder when it was examined for omens."

Weighing Pausanias' first-hand account, Robertson proposes there was once an impressive, unroofed, walled shrine on the Acropolis that sheltered a well or basin containing seawater: "Whenever the south wind blew, it gave out a sound of waves, a marvelous sign." The fierce statue of Athena Promachos, shown armed and striding into battle, "gave the Athenians a terrible omen in the war between Antony, whom Athens favored, and Octavian, who won." According to Cassius Dio, the statue "turned round to the west and spat blood."

Robertson's etymological analysis of the strange name of Erechtheus, legendary king of Athens, reveals the agrarian ancestry of culture (which poststructuralism so misunderstands because of its blindness to nature). Erechtheus "typifies the threshing," a crucial harvest operation. His name is the noun of the verb erechthô, related to ereikô, which means to "split" or "rend" or "smash": "Its original sphere is 'cracking' or 'bruising' or 'grinding' vegetables, especially legumes." Hence erechthô means "'flail', 'thresh', as with repeated blows," and "Erechtheus" means "Thresher."

To "thresh" meant to "smite": Robertson concludes, "The prehistoric threshers who inspired the Erechtheus story were a file of men wielding sticks or some more special implement." I would appropriate this to support my theory in "Sexual Personae," inspired by passages in the early 20th century Cambridge school of anthropology, that sadomasochism, as embodied in the novels of the Marquis de Sade, the erotic poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne and today's bondage underworld, is an atavistic remnant of ancient nature-cult.

Cheeky very cheeky. See ya just can't disagree with her. I know I don't. I would call her a libertarian feminist, even if she is a classical liberal.

See my

The Monument Builders

Historical Revisionism

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Bucky Fuller

I always liked Bucky Fuller . He is another great unsung American thinker his work is overlooked after his heyday in the sixties.

His book The Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, I read it way back in my formative years as a radical, introduced the idea of pirates as independent captialists
( before I had heard of the primitive accumulation of capital) based on a free contractual association. In other words libertarians.

A short history of the Golden Age of Piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the origins and role of the pirates in the class struggle on the high seas at the time

During the 'Golden Age' of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, crews of early proletarian rebels, dropouts from civilization, plundered the lucrative shipping lanes between Europe and America. They operated from land enclaves, free ports; 'pirate utopias' located on islands and coastlines as yet beyond the reach of civilization. From these mini-anarchies - 'temporary autonomous zones' - they launched raiding parties so successful that they created an imperial crisis, attacking British trade with the colonies, and crippling the emerging system of global exploitation, slavery and colonialism.Pirate Utopias (Do or Die)



Pirates and State-Sponsored Terrorism in Eighteenth-Century England
The political, economic, and social elites in England attempted to distinguish pirates from
imperialists during the early decades of the eighteenth-century. Only a few decades earlier, the
state appreciated the terror that pirates spread throughout the Spanish-controlled, Caribbean and
South Sea islands and settlements, but as the English began to colonize some of these territories
for themselves, they used laws, propaganda, and popular literature to vilify piracy and glorify
imperial trade and colonial occupation. However, the moral and social differences between
pirates and imperialists were much less clear. England’s rigid, hierarchical social structure
encouraged marginalized people to leave and become pirates so they might discover and foster
their “deviant” identities. Pirates were known as brutal villains, but many of them acted like
ideal English citizens by publishing their scientific observations and creating societies on board
their ships that put into practice the democratic and egalitarian ideals that were more rhetoric
than reality in the English colonies and in England itself. Many imperialists, on the other hand,
acted as pirates were believed to act: they cruelly traded slaves, greedily and selfishly exploited
natural resources for a profit, and violently exploited indigenous peoples for profit. The borders
between pirate and imperialist often blurred, and although eighteenth-century English society
considered itself democratic and free, the actions of its officials and merchants supported
cultural, social, and economic terrorism abroad as well as within England itself.

Was Bucky a libertarian as Robert Anton Wilson likes to claim? You betcha. He rebelled, like the pirates he enthused about,determined not to be a wage slave.
And Wilson modeled his character Hagbard Celine after him.


WHO WAS BUCKMINSTER FULLER, ANYWAY?
Inventor? Architect? Engineer? Philosopher? Dreamer? Genius? All or none of the above?
by Amy C. Edmondson

Thus began the fifty-six-year experiment of “guinea pig B”—for Bucky—in which “an average healthy human being” resolved to become a problem solver “on behalf of all humanity.” One can only imagine the reactions of family and friends when the thirty-twoyear-old Fuller announced this. He further determined to dispense forever with the idea of “earning a living,” which to him meant advantaging oneself at the expense of others; if he concentrated on doing what needed to be done, funding would take care of itself. He decided to devote himself, broadly, to the technology of “livingry,” as opposed to weaponry.


Also See:

The Many Headed Hydra

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Body Count In Gaza

So far the body count is 1 Live Israeli hostage = 27 Dead Palestinians

If any other country did this there would be world condemnation.Israeli strikes in Gaza claim more lives But in the case of Israel there is the usual silence, or a modest tch, tch, there, there. EU warns Israel on Gaza attacks .

I would think that overthrowing a democratically elected government with force would consititute a violation of international law. Israelis support killing of Hamas leaders

I guess not if you have America on your side. And after all they know all about overthrowing democratic elections.

But after invading Gaza with tanks, bulldozers, infantry and airforce attacks the Israeli's and their allies claim the Palestinians are to blame. Blame game.Gaza offensive:Timeline

Beat your neighbour with a stick and cry out for all to hear, "see, see, he is hitting me."



Watching Gaza: “The Genovese Syndrome”

PALESTINE: The War on Children

Letter from Palestine

Except even before the hostage taking the Occupation Forces of Israel were attacking Palestinian civilians at the beach. Israel Spinning Out of Control

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Who Ya Gonna Call

America has the solution to the North Korean Crisis.

Team America World Police It tells a crazy story wherein America has taken upon itself the role of world policeman and performs its duties with a maximum of carelessness, violence and poor planning.


missles, North-Korea, crisis, Kim-Jong, -il, nukes, Sea-of-Japan, USA, Japan, China, Korea,TeamAmerica,

Success North Korean Style

This is a curious definition of success.....

"The successful missile test was part of a regular military exercise conducted by our military to boost our self-defence," Yonhap news agency quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying on KRT state TV. Defiant North Korea vows to fire more missiles

Except the missles fell short, crashing into the sea of Japan. Strange definition of success.

But being one of the last post-Stalin autarky's perhaps this was good old capitalism at play. State capitalism that is, marketing its only export.

North Korea’s test-launch of several types of missile Wednesday was an export blitz, some experts say. Missile exports are one of Pyongyang’s few sources of hard currency since the heavily militarized nation has precious few other export industries. North Korea has been exporting Scud missiles to the Middle East and Africa for up to US$4 million a pop. Pyongyang's Missile Launch 'Was Sales Pitch'

Of course there are those who see this as a more sinister geopolitcs Kim-Jong -il style. And they wouldn't be wrong. Still the point is the same. It was a sales show.

One, if the missiles are fired directly at the U.S., it may lead to misperception on the part of Washington, and Pyongyang may be faced with an unintended situation (of a U.S. military strike). Instead, by targeting the U.S.’s greatest ally, Japan, North Korea can influence Japanese public opinion to exert pressure on the U.S. This is why the North fired but blew up mid-way the missile that can reach U.S. mainland. Although the analysis from the U.S. is that Pyongyang’s last test-launch did not succeed, it is unlikely to be a failure. Through the launch, North Korea clearly showed the U.S. it has the capability to reach U.S. mainland, and then exploded the missile at mid-stage. Pyongyang will now be watching how public opinion in Japan will be formed, and whether this will exert pressure on the U.S. to engage in direct dialogue with North Korea.[Guest Column] Kim Jong-il’s Missile Crisis Strategy

Unfortunately further tests or even the sales of missles, say to Iran, will only cause the USA to increase its military spending on Son of Star Wars; BMD.

Everett Dolman, a professor at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, said the U.S. is not in a position to protect itself from a surprise missile attack."Right now, the U.S. has an immature system capable of protecting a few locations with questionable reliability," he said. "With American military forces stretched thin in the global war on terror and funding for the services in a downward spiral, it seems unlikely that America can field a reliable defense against a North Korean missile attack in the next half decade or more. Expert: Missiles real threat to US

Of course that may be part of the clever ploy of China to allow its puppet regime to further drive the US into debt to its largest creditor. Nah.....

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Tantrik Economics

on the social level, the Kartābhajās bring together members of all classes and social factions, rejecting caste distinctions and proclaiming the divinity of all human beings; and third, on the gender level, the Kartābhajās offered a new social space in which men and women could mix freely, even providing new opportunities for women in roles of spiritual authority. The result is a rather ingenious religious fusion – or “subversive bricolage,” which skilfully adapts and reconfigures elements from a wide range of sources – a kind of poaching or pilfering by poor lower-class consumers in a dominated religious market that demanded the subtle use of secrecy, both, as a tactic of appropriation, and as a key social strategy or way of life.
The Economics of Ecstasy - Tantra, Secrecy and Power in Colonial Bengal

Much like the early Agape Feasts of the Christians and their predecesors in the Mithras Cult. Religions of the Ancient Lowly are democratic in nature in their earliest forms, since they exist outside and against the dominantant Religious State. They offer a safe place for a declasse melange of participants, and women are notably amongst them.

These 'Love Feasts' offered the participants the free exchange of goods; potlach, a sharing of communal supper, and after that convivality, socializing, and all that could be found scandalous by the salacious.

In ancient Greece the Bacchanae were a rebellion against the rigid State Religion (see Themis by Jane Harrison) embracing the life affirming spontaniety of nature, in the form of a dead and ressurected god; Bacchus/Dionysous/Pan.

Once Christianity lost its spontaneous inclusiveness it became a State religion of Constantinople the Byzantine seat of power of the former Hellenic world. The State declared Jesus the one and only dead and ressurected god, no others need apply.

Thus the myth of the death of Pan was created by neccisities of the State. The peoples religion of ancient Rome was now the State religion of Rome, Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire.


Also see

Wikipedia: Tantra

Sacred Tantrik Texts



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GST blunder

Of course they can. They just don't want to.

Feds can't stop businesses not passing along GST cut: Flaherty

Even at 6% it is still the Gouge and Screw Tax.

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Give Em A Medal

On Canada Day they drink Canadian beer, lots of ot it, and they stumble around the Nations Capital looking for somewhere to pee, and lo and behold they find the National Momunment to Canada's veterans; the War Memorial and let loose a torent of used Canadian.

And stupid drunk Canadians get caught on film by sober Canadian vet.

A man is seen relieving himself on the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Saturday July 1, 2006. (CP / Michael Pilon)

The Nation howls in torment, and predictably new tough laws are called for by the Statists. But taking direct action one man, makes a stand.

War Memorial defender stands on guard for free
Globe and Mail -
Ottawa -- A lone, unemployed man donned a Maple Leaf-red sweater yesterday and stood guard by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the National War Memorial. Authorities haven't decided yet how they'll improve security but Don Dawson wasn't going to wait for them to make up their minds.

He draped a vintage Canadian Legion flag - a British ensign with a green maple leaf imposed in the centre - over his shoulder and stood rigidly at attention.

"I got up this morning and asked myself what I could do about this, and I decided to come here out of respect for all the soldiers who died fighting for the freedom of Canada," said Dawson, who spent the whole day at the site.

What security they had none or this would not have happened. Pin a medal on those wiley drunk Canadians, celebrating the nations holiday, they have left a legacy not of used beer but of improved security.

Seems on Captiol Hill, in this "Post 9/11 world", someone forgot to put the guard out in the nations capital at its mouments. And they forgot to provide sufficient porto-potties.

First guy they should hire is the one who shows he knows a thing or two the guy who stood on guard today.

Mr. Dawson said he'd like to see a member of the Governor General's Foot Guards, on parade on Parliament Hill in the summer months, assigned to the site during the day and security guards posted at night.

“When they brought him — the unknown soldier — back from France in 2000, this site changed from a war memorial to a grave site, so there should always be an attendant, at least during the day,” Mr. Dawson said.

“This wouldn't be to prevent vandalism, but would be more a show of respect. Of course, it would help prevent these sorts of incidents as well.”

Unfortunately they will probably contract out the jobs to a private security company,there also private porto-pottie companies that are looking for business.


Of course no one is going to pee there ever again, or at least not until the next Capitol Hill Canada Day fete next year, with beer and drunks in public. They may have better security but will they have enough porto-potties.

Dear Reader;
Like you I am outraged, My father and relatives are all veterans. But the point is t you can blame the beer, the lack of civics classes, or the general lack of honour given to our national momunments, it all adds up to the same thing, out of sight out of mind.

Since we see all those guarded monuments in other countries, we assume the same happens here. And shock of shocks it doesn't. The urination incident drew our attention to this shameful condition. So let's not shoot the messanger. Send em to re-education camp, make em clean the monument.





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World Cup This & That

Canada's Truimph Englands Shame. It was the only Canadian player in the English Team who made the only goal in Englands defeat at the hands of Portugal.

Canadian eh. Calgary's Owen Hargreaves leaves mark on World Cup

Now if we had only twelve more like him we could field a team in the next world cup.World Cup 2006: Hargreaves proved us all wrong

Even the Queen was unimpressed with the English team in the World Cup. The Queen of Rock n Roll that is. Elton John Lashes Out At England World Cup Team

It was debacle that should lead to a clean sweep.

Beckham quits as captain after England's World Cup exit

Unfortunately the wrong man quit.

Sven's Swansong: I should have bowed out a World Cup winner - so I'm sorry, and sad


Go Already.


BARS and restaurants are counting the cost of the weekend riot in Bolton town centre after England's World Cup defeat.

At least in Redmonton they only riot on Whyte Avenue after the Oilers win. Workingclass hooliganism knows no nation. Workers of the World United, Anyone But Arsenal




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Sir-Elton-John

Lord of the Dance

I have blogged on Pan and Dionysus this week. And lo and behold he has appeared before me. As a half naked homeless man, a street person, with his shopping cart and his stark asiatic features of the Innu of the North. A Shaman who is out of place and time. On Whyte Avenue. As they say when it comes to magick it takes one to know one. Or as they say in Greek παίρνει ένας για να ξέρει ενός.


Dance, dance where ever you maybe
For I am the Lord of the Dance said he


Half naked
wrapped in a cloud of extasy
He dances on the street
His shopping cart full of sacred relics
Innu from the north
stripped down in the heat of the south
stripped of all possesions
except those he can carry
stripped of all ego
he dances to the music of the street
unheard by the consumers
who flock past him
possessed
The shaman,
The guru,
The extatic,
lost in the modern world
with his eyes inward
to the the past
to the present
to the future
to the moment
in extasis
A joy
we should
share
celebrate
extol
throw flowers
give gifts
he would not accept
a shiny new car
nor has he anything to teach
he is no guru
no saint
no mystic
except he is
in urban space
the seeing man
for all who are blinded
by capitalism


july 04,06



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Blasphemy

I will survive (Jesus Version)
Very funny but blasphemy none the less. Ain't free speech on the internet grand?!

Do ya think this may be why the Pope banned pop music from Catholic churches?

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Once More On the Fourth

Radgeek once again extols an anarchist version of what American Independence means,

July 4th is the anniversary of the ignominious death of a tyranny, not the birth of a new government. On July 4th, 1776, there was no such thing as the United States of America. The regime under which we live today was not proclaimed until almost a decade later, on September 17, 1787. What was proclaimed on July 4th was not the establishment of a new government, but the dissolution of all political allegiance to the old one. All for the best: a transfer of power from London to Washington is no more worthy of celebration than any other coup d’etat. What is worth celebrating is this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it …. [W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

—Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1776

That is, the revolutionary doctrine that we all, each of us, are the equal of every puffed-up prince and President, that as such you, personally, have every right to refuse the arbitrary orders of tyrants, to ignore their sanctimonious claims of sovereignty, to sever all political connections if you want, and to defend yourself from any usurper who would try to rule you without your consent.

It was an agrarian mechanics rebellion that is forgotten in the Sturm and Drang of American Nationalism.

Just as it is forgotten that the first martyr of the revolution was a free black mechanic and sailor.

It would be the mechanics revolt in Boston that touches off the revolution.

Deference or Defiance in Eighteenth-Century America? A Round Table

Gangs of America by Ted Nace - Chapter 4
Why the Colonists Feared Corporations
In which the citizens of Boston demonstrate the use of the hatchet as an anti-monopoly device (1770-1773)

Shay's Rebellion

Which is why the earliest celebrations of July 4th were not state holidays but a mechanics movement along with protests over changes in their rights as journeymen. It was the core of the Republican poitics of the early 19th Century. It would be the mechanics, including free black sailors and tradesmen, who formed the unions as well as fraternal societies that were populist organizations in America.

Not surprisingly, this consensus proved untenable. As mechanics demanded protection for
their skilled trades, wealthier merchant- manufacturers celebrated the large scale, technologically
advanced operations that threatened to put artisans out of business. In the most insightful chapter
of the book, Peskin examines how mechanic, manufacturer, and manufacturing changed in meaning
between the 1790s and 1820. Terms that had been broadly inclusive of productive labor taking place
in rural households and urban craft workshops became narrow: manufacturing was what took place
in factories, a manufacturer was someone owning a factory, and mechanic lost its association with
craft skill to become a synonym for a factory machinist. Perversely, the Mechanics’ banks that
appeared in the 1800s had little to do with artisan labor, but rather marked the attempt of urban
businessmen to dress a suspicious financial institution in republican garb. By the late 1820s, at “the
high tide of antebellum protectionism” (207), politicians had become the leading advocates of
manufacturing and craft artisans were virtually excluded from the conversation. At precisely the
moment when “the factory system and industrial capitalism were becoming significant in reality as
well as in rhetoric” (218), it became far more difficult to assert that all would share equally in
manufacturing’s bounty. The labor radicalism of the Workingmen’s parties offered one model of
competing class interests, whereas the sectional defiance of Southern nullifiers would offer another.
Peskin observes the continuities between colonial promanufacturing rhetoric of the 1760s and the
Whig party’s American System in the 1830s. But by this later date, mercantilist faith in government’s
ability to create an economy greater than the sum of its parts had “become a bittersweet fantasy, an
attempt to hold on to an increasingly distant past, when harmony and national self-sufficiency
seemed attainable goals” (221). Manufacturing Revolution: The Intellectual Origins of Early American Industry.

One should not forget the importance of the internationalism of the American revolt which inspired both the French and the Haitian revolution. Word of which had spread from Africans in the French colony of New Orleans via free black sailors
who were inculcated with Freemasonry and the enlightenment values of liberty, equality and fraternity, as was the Haitian revolt.

This portrait (left) of an unidentified Revolutionary War sailor was painted in oil by an unknown artist, circa 1780. Prior to the war, many blacks were already experienced seamen, having served in the British navy and in the colonies' state navies, as well as on merchant vessels in the North and the South. This sailor's dress uniform suggests that he served in the navy, rather than with a privateer.








Jim Thomson | The Haitian Revolution and the Forging of America

Many Fraternal Groups Grew From Masonic Seed (Part 1 -- 1730-1860 )

Prince Hall, Freemasonry, and Genealogy

Joe William Trotter - African American Fraternal Organizations

African-Americans in Antebellum Boston

African American Odyssey: Free Blacks in the Antebellum Period ...

Weevils in the Wheat: Free Blacks and the Constitution, 1787-1860

The Revolution's Black Soldiers

Adeleke, Tunde "Violence as an Option for Free Blacks in Nineteenth-Century America"

The Racist Roots of Gun Control

Women in Antebellum America | Pre-Civil War Women | Women in ...



Also See: Happy 4th of July

Plutocrats Rule

American Fairy Tale

Secular Democracy

Slavery in Canada

A NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION

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Red Moon Rising

On July 2nd the evening moon turned blood red. Yesterday the sunset too was blood red, and the moon returned glowing scarlet. It's July in Edmonton, forest fire season.

Fires to the west of us fires to the east of us, and fires to the north. And it's bloody hot. 33 c yesterday. Record highs, record heat, forest fire season.

It's the season of the blood moon.

Which has more than one meaning.



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red-moon, fores, fire, forest-fire, smoke, eclipse, mensturation, Alberta, B.C., Sask

Happy 4th of July

It is still legal to burn the flag in the good ol US of A.

See My Tribute From Last Year.


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Max Stirner Wears Prada

Movie Review from Marginal Revolution on The Devil Wears Prada.

The irony in the title made it worth the read. Then I came across the name of Max Stirner. A young Hegelian along with Marx. The father of individualist anarchism.

Of course Meryl Streep is playing the ultimate egoist.

Yet the reviewer associates Anna Hathaway the assistant as the source of individualist rebellion and real egoism. The lowely, the worker, the slave by any other name, she who must ob ey, as did Stirner. Bravo.

The Devil Wears Prada -- a Straussian interpretation

Make no mistake about it, this is a movie about sheer power lust. It is a movie of how that lust can be cloaked or shifted to another sphere but never denied. Never bottled up. Never stopped. It is a delicious tale of social intrigue, ambition, class, and how much clothes really do matter. And to take sweet Anne Hathaway -- remember the wonderful but underrated Ella Enchanted?-- and have her play Max Stirner -- that is a mark of genius.

And then there is this wonderfully bitchy review which ends with

God. People who think fashion industry girls' lives are just like the movies are so wrong. Those who really live this way are actually thinner, meaner, and don't need labels to feel important. Hello, their daddies can totally buy and sell most people's entire family.


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Unmasking Hayek

Say no more.

Hayek’s theory of the progressive society is a combination of empirical determinism with a reductionist understanding of social progress as economic (and, secondarily, scientific-technological) in a systemic, non-humanist sense. In his perspective, the connection between social progress and human progress is so loose that it is reduced to mere accident (e.g. set up the system and hope for the best). As will become clear from the analysis of Smith’s theory later in this thesis, Hayek’s accidentalism bears little resemblance to Adam Smith’s idea of a perfect system of natural liberty, whose perfection is measured by its capacity to deliver to all human beings, in a fair manner, the goods they are entitled to in virtue of their skills and efforts.
HUMAN AND SOCIAL PROGRESS:PROJECTS AND PERSPECTIVES

Also See: Hayek

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Antisemitism, Its History and Causes

A misunderstood work on Anti-Semitism.

Antisemitism, Its History and Causes, 1894
One will find Lazare's book cited at many anti-semitic websites and in in anti-semitic publications. The reason for this is that Lazare conducted a major reveiw of the history of anti-semitism and, to a very large decree, can be read as having put the blame on Jews themselves.This, however, is a misreading of his work. From the way he is cited by anti-semites it may come as something of a surprise to note that Lazare, a journalist, was famous as the first defender of Captain Dreyfus - the first Drefusyard. Moreover, he was perhaps the first French Jewish intellectual to commit fully to Zionism as a political solution. The material presented by Lazare is a valuable addition to online data about the history of Anti-semitism. Many of Lazare's explanations can be, and should, be challenged. But this is the work of a man trying to understand a phenomenon of hatred, not the work of a self-hating Jew.


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